Tag Archives: forgiveness

To me this story is about power – who has it, who wants it, who needs it. Last month we dealt with Krishna and his mother and touched on issues of motherhood. This month the story brings me to issues of childhood.

When I was little it seemed like I was in a continuous struggle for power with my mother; a struggle into which I had arbitrarily been plunged without instruction book or reason. Of course I’m describing my feelings – the language came with education and experience and years of introspection and reflection – but I knew instinctively, as all young animals know, that understanding the power dynamics of my tribe was vital to survival.

I know now, she did not see me as her adversary. In fact, the struggle I took so personally wasn’t personal at all. Her anger, come by honestly, could not be directed at its proper target and so she turned it on herself and on me.

Peas were a huge issue. I hated them, she insisted on serving them. Truly they made me gag. It was the texture more than anything else, but the color didn’t help. In the beginning they were canned. The frozen ones were mildly better though by the time they came around the battle lines were so entrenched no one could back down. On the nights she served peas I often sat in front of am congealing food until bedtime. I devised all kinds of devious ways of folding them up in my paper napkins and then excusing myself to go to the bathroom where I flushed them down the toilet. I stuffed them in my pockets, pushed them into the soft stick of butter in the butter dish, dropped them in my glass of milk, and fed them to the dog who spit them out. He didn’t like them either. Naturally, these stratagems usually failed, resulting in interminable lectures about starving children in foreign climes. The slightest hint of defiance in the form of body language or glances led to high-pitched angry tirades that shattered everyone’s peace for the rest of the evening.

Years later, my mom went back to college and took all kinds of classes. We grew to expect weird innovations in our family routines with each new course and teased her unmercifully, but I was proud of her. She willingly embraced those new ideas, pondered their meaning and applied them to her own internal process. One day, I was sitting on a kitchen stool chopping onions for the meal she was fixing when suddenly my mother burst into tears and said, “I’m so sorry I made you eat your peas.”

It was an extraordinary moment of contrition on her part and forgiveness on mine. It was all that was said. I think we were both shocked. We didn’t talk about my childhood again until years later when I had garnered the courage and experience to be able to initiate the conversation.

My collage shows a child spitting out her peas – her mouth, like Krishna’s, is full of stars to remind us how precious children are. There are two other little ones here – the goblin I thought myself to be and the defiant self-possessed little girl who clung to her own identity and integrity. The fabric in the background refers to the part of this month’s story I liked best – the bed covers and mattresses of many colors. My mom loved fabrics and patterns and taught me to love them, too. My eye for color and talent for composition are part of her legacy.

Bed was a special place for me – the place I could be myself, escape into imagination, and read to my heart’s content with the help of a flashlight. It was also my cache. I hid food under the bed. Not peas, of course, stolen cookies and forbidden chocolate made up my stash. You can see candy wrappers and cookies peeking out beneath the pillows.

My peas, like the princess’s are like grit rubbing against the soft vulnerable flesh of an oyster. Year after year, I exude nacre to ease my discomfort, working and re-working the raw material of childhood until it becomes a luminous, precious pearl that enriches and enhances my life. The proverbial pea also provides grit in the sense of “true grit.” I’ve found that in my life it is the dis-comforts that make me strong and build my character.

To me, the scariest part of the Red Riding Hood story comes when the wolf dresses up in Grandmother’s clothes. He pretends to be something he’s not in order to fool Red while intending her harm. It’s pretty easy to figure out why this is my negative – I grew up with a mother prone to fits of rage – she could turn on a dime from ordinary mom to a raging fury. Scary. The huntsman could easily be a stand-in for the dad meant to protect me. Although he never approved of her angry outbursts, he believed parents should “present a united front.” Their behavior left me with a lifelong aversion to hypocrisy and a desperate (at least for the first couple of decades) need both to understand how things work and to see them for what they really are. All in all, not such a negative legacy. Both traits stood me in good stead. The drive to understand is a blessing, for as I’ve come to learn, understanding engenders forgiveness and provides the ground from which compassion may arise.

Much has changed since my childhood – more relevantly, much has expanded – mind, heart, memory, information, compassion and comprehension have all increased in capacity. The space taken up in my interior landscape by childhood trauma is decreasing proportionally. In fact, I can now fit it onto an 8×10 piece of canvas covered cardboard. Not that the over-size fangs, preternatural hearing and x-ray vision don’t still lurk in the shadows. Of course, they do. The evidence of their power is right here; captured in the imagery I chose to use.

But let’s go back to the benefits of my shadowy legacy. Not only was I frightened of those huge teeth, ears and eyes – I wanted their power for myself. Just now, writing these words I didn’t expect to say, that have never even occurred to me before, I begin to understand. I used to think I owed my talent for acute observation to the need to gauge my mother’s moods quickly. Probably true, but also (also being one of my most favorite words), I now see that I probably sharpened the acuity of my own senses in order to acquire some of the power those amplified sense organs could bestow.

See how this process works? I could have sworn I’d figured out everything about the dynamic between my young mother and the girl-child I once was. Yet, the collage has revealed a new piece of information. I understand more about why I am what I am. Once again I get to marvel at the interrelatedness of the universe, the prevalence of synchronicity and the elegance of cosmic timing. I am more connected; more humble, easier than I was when I started. Halleluiah.